“Make sure Matthew doesn’t do anything stupid before I get back.”
“You’re coming back?” I say.
“Yeah,” he replies. He adjusts his collar, levels me with eyes alight with madness, then adds, “I’m off to fetch Bethany.”
“What the Hell are you talking about?”
He grins, “Trust me,” and opens the door to the cupboard under the stairs. He steps in and closes it.
“What the …!?” I reach the door, throwing it open so hard that the handle comes away in my hand.
I peer in, expecting to see Joe but instead there’s a heap of deck chairs, a vacuum, and a plastic set of drawers stuffed with tools.
Joe has vanished.

“In five hours, Malcom Burke would be standing in a dark corner of the hospital with the ghost of his daughter in his pocket, waiting to hear whether the surgeon could remove the glass shards from his wife’s eyes.”

“I stole a ghost.
I didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t even believe they existed.
It came with an old watch, and there was nothing about the antique timepiece that suggested it was haunted. The gold inlaid face and precise movement of the three hands spoke quality, as did its weight in my hand. I could tell it was expensive.
It was, but not financially.”